Never-say-die restauranteur starts afresh

Joe Wong refuses to let himself be another small business casualty of the recession.

"I've never given up on anything," says the owner of Jade Garden Asian Bistro in Damonte Ranch. "It's not in my nature. I'm not going to lose."

But he's needed to swallow hard and face some difficult realities.

Sixteen months after opening The Green Onion, a soup-and-salad restaurant concept in Damonte Ranch, Wong acknowledged that the concept wasn't working.

The young families that it targeted were hard hit by last summer's high gas prices and hit even harder by deepening recession.

The Green Onion's management tinkered with the menu. They moved the location of the cashier. Wong bought out his partner, Eric Huber, and continued the search for the right formula for The Green Onion.

By this spring, he'd decided the right formula was simple: Shut it down and start over.

In April, he closed The Green Onion and began a fast-and-furious month-long remodeling. Out went the salad bar, the self-serve soda machine, the pasta bar.

In its place, Wong's crew installed a classically subtle Asian-styled interior, a new bar, a spot for musicians to play on weekend evenings.

The goal of Wong and his staff of 22: "We want to be able to provide a mini-vacation. When you come here, you're pampered."

Business both at lunch and dinner has developed steadily for the new concept, and Wong works hard to get the word out that the doors are open.

When the shopping center location at 199 Damonte Ranch Parkway reopened on Mother's Day, the restaurant owner had invested more than $100,000 into Jade Garden and that's on top of what he'd previously invested in The Green Onion.

He'd made good money in a previous career as a corporate chief financial officer, socking some of it away. But the failed exercise with The Green Onion and the need to reinvest to get Jade Garden off the ground chewed into his savings.

Nevada Microenterprise Initiative, a nonprofit that assists small startups, heard a pitch from Wong for a loan.

Edward Vento, a senior business development officer with the initiative, was so wowed by Wong's tenacity that he pointed him in the direction of Mountain America Credit Union, which provided credit for the new restaurant.

At the same time, Wong was working carefully to create a menu that distinguishes Jade Garden from other Asian restaurants in the market.

An uncle, a longtime owner of Asian restaurants in Denver, steered him away from entrees that are staples in most Asian restaurants. There's no sweet and sour chicken on the Jade Garden. Instead diners find stir-fried whole Dungeness crab and ginger duck with fresh pineapple.

And to make sure the menu delivers on its promise, Wong brought in the best Asian chef he knows, luring her out of retirement after three years to come back to working seven days a week. But the chef is more than a much-recognized owner of Asian restaurants for well over two decades.

She's also Wong's mother.